


All Along the Watchtower

by virtueofvice



Category: Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Justice League - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Freeform, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5493140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueofvice/pseuds/virtueofvice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short stories set within the Justice League/DC Universe, mostly focusing on the dynamics shown in the animated series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fires in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman is drawn to Wonder Woman like a moth to a flame. It might warm him, or burn him down.

She trains, but without fervor, hardly paying attention. He cannot tell what thrills him more - the way she swats her opponents down, efficient even in her distraction. Or the way she cries out when he in turn drives her into the unforgiving floor, when he has his chance to spar. Does she really feel pain; from his blows, his knee jammed against her back? Or is the cry only intended to excite him? He cannot tell. Either possibility sets his pulse to thrumming. He watches her stride off to the showers, lariat coiled casually around her shoulder, faint sheen of sweat a benediction in its rarity. Realizing how long it has been, billionaire Bruce Wayne forever straddling the line between playboy and eligible bachelor, the dance of falsehoods leaving his body drawn taut like a bow and straining for release.

When the door slides open, she knows it is him - Batman is too obsessed with control to give anyone else a master key. He always takes her from behind, slipping into her bed like an incubus, mouth hot on her neck as he teases her to a fever pitch and wraps one large rough hand around her thigh, pulling it flush to her side. His thick, hard cock stretches her in ways she never knew she needed, his hand over her mouth stifling her cries.

He never shows himself to her, at home in the dark as always. But he is vocal, unusually so - growling as she squirms against him, thrusting into her to the hilt with a grunt buried in her raven hair, the gasp when he's about to come tapering into a stuttering groan. He never speaks her name - he doesn't have to. She knows who he burns for, hooded eyes beneath the cowl following her as she moves about the Watchtower.

She does not initially take him in her mouth, but laves at him, licking and leaving wet, open-mouthed kisses along his length. He realizes with a smoldering rush that she has never done this for a man before, and is repeating - _adapting_ \- the techniques she has learned from a female lover. The knowledge makes him burn hotter, cock throbbing as a gleam of wetness pearls at the tip.

They say nothing, name nothing, content to stoke fires in the dark; but when an enemy with a treacherous blow knocks her unconscious on the battlefield, Batman beats him nearly to death. He is astonishing in his savagery, and while the League makes no comment, he knows a line has been crossed. When blue eyes open in the medical bay he can breathe again... But he wonders if the ember he has been quietly, jealously guarding will one day flare up and burn him alive.


	2. Being Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> J'onn muses on the secrets of gods and men, and what it means to be human.

J'onn knows, but says nothing. 

Born on Mars, audible communication is alien to him, mouths making sounds that are flat and lacking in depth or character. In a world of telepaths, one learns not to _listen_. It is impolite. But one also learns to not think so _loudly_ , not feel in such vivid color. On Earth, they take no such precautions. Humans - or at least, non-telepaths - are accustomed to the privacy of their own heads. Their thoughts are clamorous and insistent, breaking through his mental barriers despite his best efforts to keep them out. Over time, his natural curiosity overrides the desire to maintain the futile endeavor, and he lets the voices come.

The secrets his teammates unwittingly show him are like so many crystals, each unique and lovely in its own way; but jagged, fragile, made in geometric patterns that repeat and repeat - fear, rage, love. 

The Flash, his ceaseless anxiety and heart of gold. The way he worries for his parents below on Earth, almost constantly. The way he questions his place on the team, as if speed and strength are the only things he has to offer.

Superman's occasional flare of white-hot jealousy towards the Batman; or the desire to fly fast and far and leave all of it, all of it behind. The ache of his loneliness, a howling void not dissimilar from J'onn's own. 

How the hawk has a mate she has never spoken of, and perhaps never will, for reasons he can understand but not translate. Her frustration, her fury; the deep dark night of her soul that she keeps well hidden. 

How beneath the gauntlets and bravado, deep inside Wonder Woman, there lives a little girl who still cries for her mother. How there is something in her; a low, sweet throb, that echoes back whenever the Batman growls her name in a briefing.

The way the Green Lantern throws himself to the floor to force out a series of punishing pushups, whenever Hawkgirl's fierce green eyes beneath the mask or the rasping, throaty keen of her battle cry linger overlong in his mind. The way the sensation of feathers against his skin, coming unbidden from his imagination, makes him sweat.

How on some nights, Batman takes morphine - a minuscule dose, to quiet the agonized screaming of his battered body, because he is only human and they are not. Because, ironically, he does not want to dream - but the sleeping silence drags him back to the things he tries to forget, the heat and the horror. The way he watches Diana on the sparring floor and thinks he might combust, his secret want for her burning away all his wards and leaving him exposed and vulnerable.

Thoughts like this make the Martian uncomfortable; warm-blooded, Earth's rich atmosphere suddenly too thin. If he had to guess, he would assume it is the way humans feel before mating, their carbon-based bodies hot with primitive need. It is uncomfortable; but it is also interesting, and he is curious.

He imagines what it would be like to be human for a day. Would he burn, like they do? Would his thoughts be splashed across the ether in living color?

J'onn wonders, but says nothing.


	3. Gods and Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief vignette highlighting Kon-El's feelings about Megann.

She could be anyone he wants her to be, but he wants her only to be herself, that honey sweetness in his mind, the voice that was so gentle and questing that at first he could not trust it - his only experience with kindness being that it causes pain. The steel in battle, her cold rationality that at times astounds him. The neat separation in her mind, the way she carefully boxes up and tucks away everything that scares her. 

He had no voice before she met him, was nothing but anger and the cobbled-together parts of great men. A Frankenstein's monster of dashed hopes and paranoid ambition. He thinks that he will be a hero, or nothing at all, until she shows him the beauty of all that is in between. Her hand is all softness and warmth in his. The aroma of her cooking becomes familiar in a way that he grows to associate with home, a word he did not know before she unlocked the last cage he was trapped in and set him free.

He is worried he will break her, as he breaks everything else, but she is yielding as water beneath him, welcoming as earth. She sighs, and it is the wind, whispering his name.  She shines like a new dawn, trembling and blossoming under his touch like wildflowers in the fragile springtime. She breathes new life into his lungs and he combusts, all at once hopelessly, recklessly in love. 

She looks at him with trust, open admiration - the way people look at heroes. He looks at her as if she is the ground beneath his feet and the sky arching overhead - as if she is the only word he knows for god.


End file.
